


In Winter

by Katherine



Category: The Witch's Brat - Rosemary Sutcliff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-05 03:37:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1089162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katherine/pseuds/Katherine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lovel's thoughts of Rahere, set against the background of Saint Bartholomew's hospital at Smithfield.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Winter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [amyfortuna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amyfortuna/gifts).



It was deep winter still when Lovel went to Rahere to broach the subject of the beggar woman and her child. He was determined, and hopeful, and reluctant, all mingled together. Also mixed with those was a guilt that this subject, true and compassionate though it was, ran in some way as a mere excuse.

Rahere was so tremendously busy with matters of import—and Lovel himself was busy, with the dispensary and the people in need of care—that there was little time for them to talk together. A reason to do so was therefore welcome.

* * *

"Many of them here won't have to do with turning her out," Lovel said, straightforward. "Not her with a child born here on Christmas Eve."

"Will you try to find a place for every person you pity?" Rahere asked. One of his hands moved on the papers in front of him as if to soothe what was noted there. 

Lovel answered honestly, looking right into Rahere's grey eyes. "I wish to."

He was certain that Rahere was remembering a similar conversation. That one had ended with Rahere allowing that Nick could be there through the winter. Nick who would be a course-setter, Lovel hoped, and who was being a carver now while still healing. Nick who had carved a wooden lamb for the baby.

But making room for someone to stay the winter to be healed was a different thing than making one for a woman with no other place to go to. A woman and her baby, no less.

"She can have a pallet in the kitchen," Rahere said at last. "Of course with the child."

* * *

She found a high place to set the wooden lamb from concern her son would get it in his mouth, or that some carelessness of her own would break it. The lamb was a thing of their very own, carved by a man who had not protested the crying of her child.

In truth there were times when the kitchen was far quieter than her pallet in the women's ward among the ill had been. At times now she rocked her son to the noise of the stirabout pots being scraped. 

"They will give you no ruth," Sister Gertruda told her. "Not for lumps in the stirabout nor burnt pieces to any of the food." The hurt was barely visible in her expression, but was noticeable to one who had to watch all things closely. "Nor will they let a person do some other task when it's to be her turn in the kitchens."

She might come to mind that herself, she supposed, but that did not feel likely now with this being a place she was allowed to stay with her child, warm and safe from the winter.

* * *

The sleet had abated, but there was a drifting of snow on the edges of the physic garden beds. The beds were darkly bare except for that, with what would grow in them either not yet planted or still deep under the ground. Sleeping as Lovel himself should be, instead of his wandering the grounds in the moonlight.

Along the wall were the few hardy winter-green plants growing in the cold. Lovel could have named them all and their uses but tonight tried to see them only as patches of greyed green and reaching sticks, as Nick might do when Lovel brought him here. Soon, with God's grace, that leg would be healed enough to try.

Lovel considered his own footmarks, step and drag, step and drag, on the ground. It would be a fine thing for him to bring symmetry back to another's pattern of steps.

* * *

With his hurt leg stiffly stretched out, Nick sat on his bed at the far end of the men's ward. His leg ached in the splint and, trying to endure that stoically, he turned his concentration to the piece of wood in his hands. Once he had carved the detail he wanted into the curve of the angel's wing he set down the knife and pushed at the wood shavings. Sister Aldis might not sweep so loudly if he kept the curls of wood more contained. Nick would be in the ward a long stretch of time still while Brother Lovel continued his healing work.

It was a fine thing, Nick thought, to be treated by one knows how it is to live inside crookedness. There was a knowing way to Brother Lovel. The manner in which Lovel assessed his leg reminded Nick of his own feeling for stone.

* * *

Lovel knew from that first meeting with Rahere so many years gone that would answer Rahere's whistle like a page ready to serve or like a dog well-trained to heel. He knew he would do so, still. Not if there would be need to leave or neglect those people in his care. But he had that day to think of when Lovel came to Smithfield. Rahere told him then what meaning he had taken in Lovel's saying he could not leave Brother Anslem. Lovel was utterly confident that Rahere would never cause him to be other than a healer.

Once Lovel Nick was along the way to healing and no longer in the ward Lovel spent more time with his other patients. Lovel went now and again to see Nick at his work in the kitchens, reminding himself of Nick's impatience to be back to his own calling. There were times when Lovel saw Nick instead walking slowly in the physic garden. Lovel forbade to mention his sense that Nick returned to the garden because of taking his first steps there after the confined time healing. Instead he joked gently to Nick that a day when all the folk at Saint Bartholomew's hospital fell ill of the same thing would be the day when some plant from the physic garden should go into the stirabout instead of to the dispensary. It was not much of a joke, but was Lovel's own.

Rahere could be witty when he chose, which was far less often now than he had been that long-ago day when he paused in his travel to lodge at Minster. He had, then and still, a way of drawing men to him. Along with that was an intensity that Lovel found to be nearly frightening at times. Yet it was not a fear which made Lovel wish to avoid him, rather a feeling that made him wish to fawn as a dog fawns, waiting for a reassuring word. Stranger even than that was Lovel's persistent thought that he would fawn for a touch of Rahere's hand.

* * *

Whatever Rahere was doing might not be a thing he could leave, Lovel was aware. Or Rahere might not wish to delay what he was going to next. It was after all nearly time for dinner, which as things were meant nearly time for Nick's good stirabout.

Now, asking Rahere if he would walk out to the physic garden with him, Lovel felt as though his chest—his very breathing—was in need of ease. He worried that Rahere would ask if there was a thing that Lovel wished to show him there. Only myself, Lovel thought.

Yet without Lovel having said more than that he wished to speak to him Rahere agreed.

Out in the garden there was a starling, brown speckled with white that reminded Lovel of snow patching the earth. He watched the bird for something to look at that was not Rahere as Lovel stumblingly explained about the yarrow. Lovel needed Rahere to know how very far from certain of his place or his own knowledge he had been; and what certainty he had found in his place at Saint Bartholomew's under Rahere's guidance.

When Lovel finally dared look to Rahere, he thought of spring.


End file.
